Will Audio Conferences Replace IM?

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Nortel Networks foresees a time when people will log on to audio
conferences all day, just as they stay in touch constantly via instant
messaging now. <BR /><BR />"We're beginning to anticipate a world
where point-to-point communication goes away in favor of constant
communication," said Phil Edholm, chief technology officer of
enterprise networks at Nortel, during a press briefing at the Networld
+Interop show being held here this week. <BR /><BR />Edholm was
discussing a video-taped demonstration shown during a keynote by
Malcolm Collins, president of enterprise networks at Nortel. The
demonstration showed an audio conference in which participants could
dial in from a PC and see who else was on the call, but they still had
to punch in a phone number and access code and navigate a series of
voice prompts to get on to the conference. <BR /><BR />That aspect of
the conferencing technology, reminiscent of today's conventional phone
conferences, will be replaced as the technology evolves, Edholm said.
<BR /><BR />"One of the problems today is, we start communicating in
one paradigm and move to another," Edholm said. In the future,
participants in online audio conferences will enter through a
conferencing interface in which it is easy to add new users, he said.
With the cost of audio conferencing going down, there is no reason it
can't become the dominant mode of voice communication, he and Collins
said. <BR /><BR />"It's always on ... in the same way that people go
to a Web site to 'talk' to each other [by typing] in chat rooms. Why
deal with that? Just talk to them," Collins said. <BR /><BR />Also in
the briefing, Collins cast a positive light on Nortel's recent
management shakeup and downplayed the competitive threat posed by
Chinese network equipment vendors such as Huawei Technologies. <BR /
><BR />Surprise has given way to enthusiasm among Nortel employees
following the termination of Frank Dunn's employment, announced on
April 28, and his replacement by William Owens. Collins said he was
not aware of any customer deals lost as a result of the shakeup and
the investigations of the company's finances. However, he acknowledged
the company has had to do a lot of work to allay customer concerns.
<BR /><BR />In answer to a question about competition from Huawei in
China and elsewhere in the world, Collins said the company's
technology is about 18 months behind that of Nortel and other leading
vendors. <BR /><BR />"At this present stage, they're really fighting
the industry in terms of cost and not in terms of innovation," Collins
said. "What they've really been doing is trying to play catch-up with
the rest of the industry. ... You've not seen a lot of innovation
yet." Nortel competes strongly against Huawei both in China and in
other markets, he said. <BR /><BR />However, Collins indicated Nortel
may have some catch-up to do against well-known vendors such as
Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks in becoming the "anti-Cisco buy"
for enterprises that don't want to go with Cisco Systems networks. He
called Extreme and Foundry "niche" vendors, but acknowledged they may
come to mind more readily than does Nortel when enterprises are
seeking a Cisco alternative. <BR /><BR />"We probably haven't marketed
ourselves well there," he said. <BR /><BR />Networld+Interop continues
through Thursday.